Gray Talon tips

[Gurith]

Hello all,

I am advancing in my first campaign and now planning on taking gray talon as my next target. (as aside from scarlet dawn that I do not share border with, all other factions are friendly with me now)

Would anyone have nice tips or design principles to apply? What is/are good weapons to use and how to avoid maximum of damages?

1/ I have noticed the advanced blueprints have smoke so I suspect laser isn't very effective against GT, correct?

2/ Should I just use a weak laser to trigger the smoke and weaken their lams? Or is this a waste or time/effort?

3/ What is the best way to defend against ICBM?

4/ Is spaced/gap armor a must? (noticed some ship with hollow point but haven't seen heat/hesh)

5/ Is a sub with missil spam the easiest way to go? (tested a few ships against the SS black current and it looks like it was doing ok ... but a bit slow to kill targets)

[Kil0]

Aside from Gashawk and Empyrian they arent that bad. For ICBM laser works great, so would anything anti air. For the shells Hollow poitns work great because they and SD afterwards use a lot of angled armor. AP and APHE are fine too just remember pointy frontsiders have a resistance to them. I prefer wedge armor for my gap armor as it reduces AP and Sabot damage by a noticeable chunk.

[Gurith]

Thanks for the details.
Regarding the wedge, does this trigger all hollow point/HEAT/HESH as well as an air gap or there is a risk to get HEAT/HESH to blast deep within the ship?
Do you use the 1m wedge for this? With the edge vertical or horizontal? edge facing outside or inside? Simple metal/alloy or heavy armor?

Are planar shields worth it to avoid damage? (with ennemies coming from above, I suspect the angle will have reduced effect)

[Laigon ♥]

3/ What is the best way to defend against ICBM?

Target prioritisation, they're easy enough to shoot down, but you need to fiddle with the prioritisation so that your weapons target them over the other threats first.

[Kil0]

Originally posted by Gurith:

Thanks for the details.
Regarding the wedge, does this trigger all hollow point/HEAT/HESH as well as an air gap or there is a risk to get HEAT/HESH to blast deep within the ship?
Do you use the 1m wedge for this? With the edge vertical or horizontal? edge facing outside or inside? Simple metal/alloy or heavy armor?

Are planar shields worth it to avoid damage? (with ennemies coming from above, I suspect the angle will have reduced effect)

It does provide a gap as well as armor yes. It will trigger hollow point but remember hollow point ignores angle so vs HP the angled armor isnt as good. It is great vs heat but hesh damage is based on the AC of the last block it went through so although it does trigger the hesh it doesnt act as spall liner wich its a layer of wood to reduce hesh. I will add that heat defence is far more important that hesh defence so dont worry about spall liners. You dont even have to use a wedge, u can use anything, but wedges have steepest angle so most damage reduction. You want to use the largest possible as the larger the block the steeper the angle and more health. That being said if you only have room for 1m the 1m wedges beat most things you could put there. But remember they are only useful if pointed at the shell that hits them. so when putting wedges or slopes in the interior imagine or test what direction and angle shells mostly come from. Planar shields are awesome, btw point them up if you dont need it pointed outward for range, it allows you to set up 15-20 degree angles instead of being capped at 45. For enemies above the 15 angle will still provide medium effectiveness, but you can have shields at different angles and have acb turn them on/off based on altitude of target (make sure to name them and use name filter in acb).

[Gurith]

Originally posted by Kil0:

Originally posted by Gurith:

Thanks for the details.
Regarding the wedge, does this trigger all hollow point/HEAT/HESH as well as an air gap or there is a risk to get HEAT/HESH to blast deep within the ship?
Do you use the 1m wedge for this? With the edge vertical or horizontal? edge facing outside or inside? Simple metal/alloy or heavy armor?

Are planar shields worth it to avoid damage? (with ennemies coming from above, I suspect the angle will have reduced effect)

It does provide a gap as well as armor yes. It will trigger hollow point but remember hollow point ignores angle so vs HP the angled armor isnt as good. It is great vs heat but hesh damage is based on the AC of the last block it went through so although it does trigger the hesh it doesnt act as spall liner wich its a layer of wood to reduce hesh. I will add that heat defence is far more important that hesh defence so dont worry about spall liners. You dont even have to use a wedge, u can use anything, but wedges have steepest angle so most damage reduction. You want to use the largest possible as the larger the block the steeper the angle and more health. That being said if you only have room for 1m the 1m wedges beat most things you could put there. But remember they are only useful if pointed at the shell that hits them. so when putting wedges or slopes in the interior imagine or test what direction and angle shells mostly come from. Planar shields are awesome, btw point them up if you dont need it pointed outward for range, it allows you to set up 15-20 degree angles instead of being capped at 45. For enemies above the 15 angle will still provide medium effectiveness, but you can have shields at different angles and have acb turn them on/off based on altitude of target (make sure to name them and use name filter in acb).

Thanks for the tips
I did not thought about pointing shields up but that is true that it would make it better.
Regarding hesh I think it was changed and now damage is based on the average of the total armor it is going through rather than the last one (apparently it was changed as it used to be based on last one only but not anymore)
I will probably go with a 5m armor being inside: HA/M-Wedge/M/M/M :Outisde
Target right now is around 1M resource ship (might increase if I plan to use it against Scarlet dawn)

[Sedrido]

if thats true about hesh than wood serve absolutley no purpose anymore

[Dakota]

Originally posted by T h e B e a n S m i t h:

if thats true about hesh than wood serve absolutley no purpose anymore

It's average but the last layer is weighted 3x higher than other layers. This means if you had say 5 layers of metal and one layer of wood at the end this is ((40x5) + (8*3)) / 8, which is 28 instead of 40 where as just double last armor would have been 16. Considering HESH raw damage also drops off as it goes through more and more high armor value stuff, being able to just remove most of its AP too right at the end was too much of a nerf to HESH, with this system for calculating its AP it lets thinner armor get a stronger bonus out of having a spall liner whereas thicker armor still has the spalling being relatively high AP but the raw damage is weaker.